Transcendentalism was a philosophical movement founded by a group of philosophers and writers who rejected traditional religion.  The leader of the movement was Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Emersons original profession was Unitarian minister but he disagreed with the rite of communion and he left the ministry.   The Transcendental movement planted the seeds of idealistic and utopian ideologies in early American culture. The movement created a cultural renaissance in New England and  was fully explained in Emersons work titled Self-Reliance.  Transcendentalism taught that humans are naturally good and that they have to look inward for self-knowledge, self-reliance and the divinity.  The Transcendentalists were against slavery and materialism.  They also questioned the absence of womens rights.  It was a group of intellectuals and many other writers were a part of this reform movement such as Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Horace Greeley and Herman Mellville.  The transcendental movement gave way to the establishment of communal living in utopian communities.  One such community was Brook Farm.  Brook Farm was founded in 1841, in West Roxbury, Massachusetts by George Ripley.  It was organized in order to mix intellectualism with farming because farming was close to nature.  This community lasted only a about three years but was the home of some famous writers including Nathanial Hawthorne who was one of the investors.  He eventually was unhappy with the community and ended up writing a novel called The Blithedale Romance which was a criticism of utopianism.

 

 

 

http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/amana/utopia.htm

 

http://www.transcendentalists.com/1emerson.html

 

http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/ideas/brhistory.html

5.  [Erin] Examine the story of the Mormons. In what way is it an "American" story (individualism, fighting religious persecution, pioneering)? In what ways is it an "un-American" story (others' intolerance, communalism, polygamy)?
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     The Mormon religion was founded by Joseph Smith Jr. in the 1830's. He claimed that he had been approached by an angel who gave him the scriptures he later used in the "Book of Morman". When his church was established he and his followers felt persecuted and outcasted by other religious groups in New York. After one of the initial moves westward, Joseph Smith was killed by a group of militia sent out by the government of Illinois to squash a Mormon uprising. Brigham Young then took over the group. To get even further away from the persecuters and to practice their faith peacefully, they decided to move farther westward. The Mormons finally settled down in Salt Lake City. 

     Mormon followers faced what many other religious groups had over the course of American History. All they really wanted was to establish their religion, and to be able to practice it somewhere where people wouldn't persecute them based on their beliefs. Like some other religious groups in history they were persecuted for their religious interpretations. Once they moved westward they were responsible for establishing Salt Lake City, and were some of the first pioneers in that area.

     The reasons that they faced such persecution was due to their interpretations of life. The biggest issue people had with the Mormon religion was their acceptance and even promotion of polygamy. They felt that select Mormon men should take "plural wives". This remained that way until the Edmunds Act of 1882, and until Wilford Woodruff required the dissolution of polygamy and of the entire Mormon political party before Utah could be entered into the Union. The Mormon society of Salt Lake City was also in a sense a communist community. The leaders of the Mormon community controlled many of the aspects about it.

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/nmormon.htm

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0881831.html


Breanne: What kind of role did the Scenca Falls convention play in the womens rights movement?

The whigs endorsed Henry Clays American system. This included the national bank, federally supported internal improvements, and tariff protection for industry. The Democrates wanted freedom from those who legislated morality, religious tyranny, and special privledges. The whigs thought there was enough freedom in the nation. The whigs campaigns included songs, cartoons, barbeques and torchlight parades. The democrats had used these techniques also. The whigs made fun of the democrats nominee Van Buren.


Kelby - How did the people of Brook Farms adapt to their new utopian society?

The road leading to Britains final decision to abolish slavery has not one but a couple of factors that determined this outcome.  The key factors in seeing that slavery was abolished in Britain in 1838 are the abolition movements, economic shifts, Imperial competition, slave revolts, and the decrease in the production and profitability of slavery.  Also, while both the U.S. and Britain had made the slave trade illegal 1808 and 1807, respectively, it took longer for the U.S. to abolish slavery for other reasons.   

 

Compared to the abolition movements the primary factor was the slave revolts.  The reason they are is that they deal with the actual slaves themselves.  The slaves revolted as the ideas of independence came to them from the news of political and social change that had resulted from the American and French revolutions.  Highly influential were the revolts in colonies such as the ones in Haiti, where it won independence in 1804, and Jamaica, where 20,000 slaves revolted and were put down in a brutal manner.  These acts by slaves fueled abolitionists and provided with more reason to fight slavery.

 

The First step in abolishing slavery in either the U.S. or Britain began with peoples efforts to raise awareness about it to the general public.  By doing so they obviously gained support and spread the word by: books, prints, posters, pamphlets, rallies, and petitions to the House of Commons.  The official Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was organized and formally founded in 1787 but some of its Quaker leaders had been active before that.  Just like in the U.S. there were important and notable people taking part in the campaign of abolition in Britain and had the same arguments as them.  Such names that were known were William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Ignatius Sancho, and Olaudah Equiano.  The latter two wrote of their experiences as slavery and their works became bestsellers while the former two worked in British politics, Wilberforce being a relentless parliamentarian and Clarkson being a lobbyist.

 

      By the end of the 18^th century economics shifts to a world capitalist economy were taking place due to manufacturing and industrialization.  As a result the rapid industrialization and the expansion of British capitalism put plantation slavery and the institution itself in a decline in Britain as they were outgrowing them.  It was becoming more profitable to invest in commerce and industry than in slavery.  Since Britain made the slave trade illegal and pulled out, it greatly hurt the slave trade.  Britain was now turning towards wage labor instead of slavery.

 

As the British government outlawed the slave trade due to the slave revolts, pushing from abolitionists and slaverys lack of importance in the economy it also made sure that no one would try to continue it on the empire.  To do this it put ships in position to enforce the ban and intercept law-breakers which continued up until the 1880s.  It would also benefit Britain if the slave trade stopped for it aided its rival France and this movement gained much support for it was seen as a patriotic war measure.  Lobbying for abolition continued until 1833 when Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act which went into effect in 1834 and transferred the status of slaves 6 and older to that of indentured laborers.  However real emancipation came in 1838 when all slaves became officially free when they did away with the indentured status.

 

Lastly the reason that the U.S. maintained slavery for a longer time was that it had established a strong proslavery stance in the Southern states and had created a large-scale internal slave trade between states that was greater than the foreign importation had been.

Question for Alexa:  In what ways or how did the Whigs make fun of Martin Van Buren?

Breanne: What kind of role did the Seneca Falls convention play in the womens rights movement? 

The Seneca Falls convention allowed the women from the womens rights movement allowed them to create their own declaration, modeled after the Declaration of Independence, called the Declaration of Sentiments. In this document, women asked for the right to vote, and the right to control their own property.

9. [Anna] Explain both the Indian removal and the Texas rebellion as products of the expansionism and land hunger of the time. The emphasis might be on how, in both cases, the U.S. government essentially reacted to local political developments.

The Indian Removal and the Texas Rebellion were both attempts to push a group of people out of a desired area, making it possible for land expansion and following the Manifest Destiny slogan. The Indian Removal was supported heavily by president Jackson and included the removal of the five civilized Native American tribes that inhabited land in the eastern part of the United States. These tribes included the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and the Seminole. The removal was carried out by forcing these tribes to move further and further west. The purpose of the Indian Removal was to clear out Native American lands to set up American communities and expand across the North American continent. In the Texas Rebellion, Texans, after being defeated in the Battle at the Alamo and the Battle of Goliad, put up a fight in the Battle of San Jacinto and eventually won their independence from Mexico though annexation. The Mexicans wanted a more populated country and promised land if people came to live in Mexico. The only catch was that people coming to live in Mexico had to convert to Catholicism, and speak the Spanish language. The Texans were fighting for their independence from Mexico after refusing to accommodate to these requests. In the Indian Removal, Native Americans were forced west so Americans could have more room for land expansion. In the Texas Rebellion, Mexicans were fighting the Texans so they could keep Texas as territory under Mexican control, which equals more land for Mexico. These two events both were results of the desire for land expansion in North America during the nineteenth century.

Resources:
o http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h306.html
o My APUSH Textbook

Anna :) wrote:

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Question to Erin: Who was Wilford Woodruff and what exactly is polygamy?

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Wilford Woodruff was the 4th president of "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" (The Mormons). He published a Manifesto that dissolved the Mormon party so that Utah could be entered into the Union.

Polygamy, is when a man marries more than one wife at a time.

7. [Joanna] Review American works of literature of this time (Thoreau, Alcott, Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville). Find contemporary European authors and works of literature (Dickens, Hugo, and Dumas). Are the American works distinct and unique when compared to the European ones?

 

 

American works are not that distinct and unique when compared to the European ones. It seems to me that all these authors worked off each other.

 

Henry David Thoreau wrote in a simplistic, free thinking, liberal way. He also believed in self reliance and tried to find the truth in himself. Thoreau is considered the godfather of the hippie movement.

 

Amos Bronson Alcott was a noted educator and social reformer. He was a transcendentalist and an utopian.  Transcendentalism is a literary and philosophical movement asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality. An Utopian is someone who wants to live in idealized perfection. Louisa May Alcott is a novelist who was also and utopian and a transcendentalist who wrote the famous novel Little Woman.

 

Edgar Allan Poe had a unique writing style. He focused on fear and guilt and the popular pseudosciences phrenology and physiognomy. He basically wrote about practices or methods considered without a scientific foundation. Phrenology is the study of the shape of the skull, it was once used to show mental capacity and a persons character. Physiognomy is the art of judging human character based on facial appearance.  Poe was also greatly influenced by Charles Dickens who was from Europe.

 

Nathaniel Hawthorne used the literary technique romanticism, in his writings. Romanticism was started in Western Europe and it was basically an artistic way of writing.  Herman Melville was influenced by Hawthorne. He wrote in depth and used gothic grimaces every so often. Basically these two American authors worked and were influence from European literary techniques.

 

 

Charles Dickens is a very popular European author, who influenced both American and European authors. Dickens writes in a florid poetic way with a comic touch. He also writes in a sarcastic way towards the wealthy during his time. Dickens also mixed fantasy and realism perfectly, to add a nice blend in his work.

 

Victor Hugo also used the romantic style of writing. Alexandre Dumas wrote historical novels that contained adventure.

 

In conclusion American authors were influenced by Charles Dickens and romanticism that both originated in Europe. Although American authors such as Thoreau did write quite differently when compared with other authors.

 www. wikipedia.com
www.sparknotes.com
 My textbook